Much has already been written about the awesome weekend that was Blogs with Balls, so instead of regurgitating everything, I’ll just tell you about my weekend that started at 3 AM Thursday morning, what I enjoyed at Blogs with Balls, what could have been better at BwB, and all the cool folks I met.
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Schedule/Results:
* Game 1: Saturday 3 PM EST (ESPNU)
* Game 2: Sunday 7 PM EST (ESPN2)
* Game 3: (if necessary) Monday 1 PM or 7 PM EST (ESPN/ESPN2)
Gainesville Super Regional
Southern Miss (38-24) vs. Florida (42-20)
Florida Gators
Road to the Super Regional: The Gators of Florida were the SEC East champions after a 19-11 conference record, but fell twice to Arkansas in the SEC Tournament. Florida nearly let the losses carry over to their performance in the Gainesville Regional when they needed five runs in the final two innings to rally to beat Bethune-Cookman in the opener. It took a two-run single by Teddy Foster to dig Florida out of what had been a 7-5 deficit entering the bottom of the ninth inning. The #8 national seed then breezed by in-state rival Miami twice (8-2, 16-5) to advance to the Super Regionals.
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Gainesville Regional
1. Florida Gators (39-20) vs 4. Bethune-Cookman Wildcats (32-26)
2. Miami Hurricanes (36-20) vs 3. Jacksonville Dolphins (36-20)
Winner to take on champion of Atlanta Regional.
The SEC Eastern division champion Florida Gators earned the number 8 national seed following a stellar regular season. The Gators have a solid club, but are certainly vulnerable to an upset this weekend.
The Gators top player is freshman Preston Tucker (.338, 12 HR, 77 RBI). The SEC Co-Freshman of the Year, Tucker will play a key role in the success of the Gators, as will veteran Avery Barnes. Coach Kevin O’Sullivan has had a revolving door for his starting pitchers this season, and nobody has established himself as the clear number one.
Stephen Locke has been the most consistent starter and could get the opening round start. Postseason baseball is often about starting pitching, and Florida will need quality outings from some inconsistent starting pitchers to advance to the super regionals.
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Each day last week, I gave a new “Blue Word o’ the Day,” and gave you the opportunity to win my money by coming up with the best/most humorous example sentence(s) and leaving it in a comment.
Throughout the week, there was consistent participation from our favorite two contributors, Blake and Sportsdawg. But, unfortunately, they were the only two to leave comments and enter the competition. With only 2 participants, there were only 6 entries on our 6 “Blue Word o’ the Day” posts.
Thanks to those readers who submitted entries. But without further hullabaloo:
The Winner Is…
1st Place Prize of $10 -
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When the Georgia Bulldogs basketball team lost at Florida by 26 last month, it was their 7th consecutive loss; they allowed Nick Calathes to post a triple-double (20 pts, 13 rebs, 10 asts); and their head coach, Dennis Felton, was fired the following day. For Florida, it was their 12th win in 13 games and their 5-1 conference start gave them the early SEC East lead.
Since then?
Well, Georgia continued losing. They pushed their losing streak to 11, including three losses of 18+ points.
And Florida? The Gators lost 3 of 4, including losses to Kentucky and Tennessee, their top competitors for the SEC East crown. However, traveling to Georgia, Florida readily expected to get back on the winning path given the Bulldogs apathetic 9-15 play.
But what Florida got was the biggest upset in the SEC and possibly the nation’s biggest upset of the season.
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I’ve got a lot of links lying around that I haven’t gotten a chance to put up, so here are 7 old, 7 new, and 2 nasties:
7 Old -
* Awesome site if you ever collected baseball (or other sports) cards - A Pack A Day
* How baseball has changed - Mop Up Duty
* Bone Crushing Hits - The Angry T
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Throughout this year’s college football bowl season, I have enjoyed being off work, spending time with friends and family, and watching plenty of bowl games on the ESPN family of networks.
The TCU-Boise game was a great display of competition, as well as the highlight reel catches in the North Carolina and West “By God” Virginia game. However, there is one thing that continually disturbs me through these early bowl games.
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Last Saturday, Sam Bradford was honored with the prestigious Heisman Trophy after being named the most outstanding player in the regular season of college football this season.
Bradford’s winnings came on the heels of the announcement of Tim Tebow’s historic win in the first annual Sports Blog Hesiman Trophy. For the Sports Blog Heisman Trophy, we e-mailed many, many bloggers asking them to give us their Heisman ballots, several of which did.
We also gave our votes, and I’d be remiss as this site’s editor if I didn’t broadcast these selections (in alphabetical order):
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| By N2H | |||
